Ronald Purcell. Faculty Emeritus of the Guitar Area, Music Dept. at California State University, Northridge. His education includes degrees in composition, musicology and pedagogy. Major teachers have been Vahdah Olcott-Bickford, Luis Elorriaga, Andrés Segovia, Emilio Pujol, Macario Santiago Kastner, Mario Castenuovo-Tedesco, and Alirio Diaz.

Prof. Purcell has produced recordings with Klavier Records, El Maestro Records, Chanterelle Historical Records, International Research Archive (IGRA), numerous tracks for the motion picture industry, and has published guitar music with Belwin Mills, Columbia Pictures Publishing Co., Warner/Chapell, Mel Bay, Chanterelle Verlag. He has published many articles for both GFA "Soundboard” and "Guitar Review” as well as foreign guitar magazines.

He is one of the original founding members of the Guitar Foundation of America, 1973 and served as its first president and later, on the GFA Advisory Board. Dr. Purcell has also served as President of the American Guitar Society for the past 22 years and is now Chairman of the AGS Board. In 2003, he was appointed Vice President of the Augustine Foundation in New York City and still serves on this major philanthropic organization. Presently, he is the director of the International Guitar Research Archive, which resides in Special Collections, of the Oviatt Library, CSUN. Through various funding sources, IGRA is developing one of the largest databases of music in print, manuscripts, journals and guitar correspondence for research scholars, students and the guitar amateur.

His guitar activities have taken him throughout the United States, Central and South America, Caribbean, Mexico, Japan and Europe, performing, adjudicating and lecturing.